But what if it does happen...

I had a busy day yesterday so I didn’t get most of my tasks done. I had to go into the city to see my doctor in the morning and I didn’t get back until 10 am and I had to go to see Gaye-Cheryl about some natural therapies at 1.30 am so that took up most of the afternoon.

So there I had it. While I did do a a couple of my tasks, I had my excuse for not getting the rest of them done.

But this morning as I prepared to write my journal, I started to wonder how yesterday’s events would have affected my progress if I had been working with a publisher through the editing process of my book. And came to the conclusion: badly.

Thus far, I’ve cocooned myself from this reality by using the rationale: It’s so far into the future and it probably won’t happen anyway, so it doesn't matter and I can just ignore it for now.

I then started to think: What if it does happen? What if a publisher does pick up my book and I have to start working to deadlines? And delivering. How am I going to manage the creative side of working to a hard deadline that could make or break my ambition of being a novelist?

The conclusion that I came to is that I can only achieve this if I have the right kind of attitude toward the task. But not just from the point of having my book accepted from a publisher, right from the beginning.

I don’t think your attitude toward something is something that can be changed easily. I think it’s sort of like an imprint. That maybe if you have the wrong attitude when you start a task, then you are going to have the wrong attitude all the way through it.

Thus, if it isn’t important enough to me to get the commitments I have made to myself done now when there is no pressure and when it is entirely my choice, then it will not be important enough to me when I have to start working under pressure from the commitment I have made to a publisher.

The attitude I have imprinted on the task right from the very beginning will shine through all the way through it. And when I’m working with an editor, they will see it.

Which means I will end up under more pressure because I will also have to deal with changing my attitude at a time when I need my creative stamina to be at its peak. When I am getting input from an external source and I have to balance the incorporation of it into my story.

I also see now that the tasks I have set myself are a good start, but I also need to set aside time to take the output of my idea generation tasks and turn them into prose. I think that waiting until I finish the plot would be a mistake because, for me, one seems to feed the other.

So really what I need to be doing now is building my creative stamina. I need to do all of the daily tasks I have set my self regardless of what else is going on in my life. And I need to mould the ideas I am generating through the daily tasks into the final product everyday. Just like I would if I was working for a client, but, for now, the client is me.

Check In:

* Journal entry Yes
* 1 hour FF writing Yes
* 1/2 hour topic specific writing Yes
* 10 min. sensual detail topic No
* Action / Reaction Sheet Yes
* Character development No